Grave Secret

Fifteen

I slept that night, but not well. It was reassuring to hear Tolliver’s breathing as I tossed and turned. When light crept under the heavy curtains and I permitted myself to get out of bed, I felt used up, exhausted before the day even began. I made myself run on the treadmill again, hoping to drum up some energy with the exercise. That strategy didn’t work.

Assuming Manfred had tracked down Tom Bowden’s current office, I decided to drop in on Dr. Bowden this morning. It would probably be easy to get past the receptionist, because the mirror told me I looked anything but well. Though we hadn’t set a definite time the night before, Manfred knocked very quietly on our door just as I finished dressing.

Tolliver, just up, had woken as grouchy as a bear. He was about as much fun to be around as a bear, too. Manfred was petty enough to emphasize Tolliver’s invalid status with obnoxious cheerfulness and many wishes for Tolliver’s recovery. Manfred was glowing with health and energy. When you added the lights bouncing off his silver piercings, he practically sparkled.

Manfred liked to talk in the morning.

As we drove to the office building Manfred had scouted the night before, he told me that his grandmother’s will had left everything to him. That had surprised his mother, who was Xylda’s only daughter, but after her initial disappointment, she’d seen the justice in it, since Manfred had taken care of Xylda her last couple of years.

“Xylda had a…?” Then I stopped, embarrassed. I’d been on the verge of expressing amazement that Xylda had had an estate to leave.

“She had a little cash stashed away, and she owned a house,” Manfred said. “It was my good luck that it was in the downtown area, and the school district needed the ground it stood on to build a new gym. I got a decent price. Like I told you before, I found all kinds of weird shit when I was cleaning out all the accumulated stuff. I put everything I wanted to keep into storage until I decide where to base myself.”

“So you’re going to make your living in your grandmother’s business, but do most of your work via email and phone?”

“That’s the idea. But I’m open to new adventures.” He glanced over at me and waggled his eyebrows.

I laughed, though reluctantly. “If you can make even a faint pass, given the way I look today, I think you’re nuts.”

“Didn’t sleep last night?”

“No, not a lot. Detective Powers died.”

Manfred’s cheer was wiped off his face as if he’d used an eraser. “That’s crappy. I’m sorry, Harper.”

I shrugged. There wasn’t anything to talk about; I’d thought everything there was to think during the course of the night, and Manfred had sense enough to recognize that.

DR. Bowden’s office was in a four-story building, an anonymous glass and brick cube that could have held anything from an accounting firm to a crime syndicate. We ran through the pouring rain to reach the sliding glass doors on the south side of the building.

As we entered, I saw a husky gray-haired man leaving the lobby by another set of doors, his jacket held above him to avert the rain. As the automatic doors swooshed shut behind his back, I thought his walk looked familiar. I looked after him for a moment, then shrugged and joined Manfred at the lobby directory. We discovered Dr. Bowden was on the third floor. He was listed as a GP.

Dr. Bowden had a modest office in that modest building. The waiting room was small, and there was one woman behind the sliding glass panel. Her workstation was messy, almost chaotic. She seemed to be the receptionist, the scheduler, and the insurance clerk, all rolled into one. Her short hair was dyed a deep red, and she wore black glasses that tilted up at the outer corners. Maybe she was aiming for retro.

“Trying to make a fashion statement,” Manfred muttered, I hoped too low for her to hear.

“Excuse me,” I said, when she didn’t look up from her computer. She had to know we were standing right there, since there was only one other person in the waiting room, a man in his sixties who was extremely thin. He was reading a Field and Stream magazine.

“Excuse me,” I said again, more sharply than I’d intended.

“Oh, sorry,” the receptionist said. She took an earpiece from her ear. “I didn’t hear you.”

“We’d like to see the doctor,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment? Do you have a referral?”

“No,” I said, and smiled.

Nonplussed, she looked past my shoulder at Manfred, as if hoping to find someone who could explain the phenomenon of a person trying to see a doctor without an appointment.

“I’m with her,” he said helpfully. “We both want to see the doctor. It’s about a personal matter.”

“You’re not the daughter-in-law-are you?” The red-headed woman was full of delighted, horrified anticipation.

“Sorry, no.” I hated to burst her bubble.

“He won’t see you,” she said. She’d switched to a confiding tone. Maybe it was Manfred’s facial decoration that had won her heart. She was obviously a woman who liked strong style. “He’s very busy.”

I looked around at the one patient, who was trying to appear oblivious to the interesting conversation we were having. “That’s not the impression I get,” I told her.

“I’ll check, though,” she said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “What’s your name, please?”

I told her. Before she could ask, I said, “This is my friend Manfred Bernardo.”

“What’s this in reference to?”

She’d never understand the long version. “It’s about a case he had around eight years ago,” I said. “We want to discuss his findings with him.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said, and rose to her feet. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

We did, and when the thin man had left and no one had taken his place in the waiting room, we waited some more.

Pointy Glasses could tell we weren’t going to leave, and apparently the doctor decided against sneaking out without seeing us. When we’d been there forty-five minutes or longer, he appeared at the door into the examining area. Dr. Bowden was in his sixties, bald except for a gray fringe. He was one of those anonymous-looking men you’d have trouble describing. You could meet him six times in a row and you’d still have to ask his name.

“All right, I have a moment now,” he said. He preceded us into his office, a small room crowded with bookcases, papers, home-stitched framed needlework (“Doctors leave their patients in stitches”), and photographs of himself with a short, very plump woman and a boy. The boy grew up to be a young man in the photos, and then there was a wedding picture of the grown-up son with his own wife.

He settled himself behind the desk, giving a good impression of a busy and prosperous man who was sparing us a few minutes out of the goodness of his heart.

“My name is Harper Connelly, and this is my friend Manfred Bernardo,” I said. “I’m here about a death you certified eight years ago, the death of a woman named Mariah Parish.”

“I’d been warned you were coming,” he said, which startled the hell out of me. “I can’t believe you’d have the sheer effrontery to show up here.”

“Why not?” I said, completely at a loss. “If Mariah Parish was murdered, it completely changes a very complicated situation.”

“Murdered?” He looked as astounded as I was, now. “But I was told… I was told you were alleging that Mariah Parish was still alive.”

“No, I’ve never said that, and I don’t believe it. Who told you that?”

But the doctor didn’t answer. He looked very concerned, but not as hostile. “You aren’t here to dispute my filing a death certificate?”

“No. I know Mariah Parish is dead. I’m just wondering why you didn’t fill in the cause of death correctly.”

Tom Bowden flushed, and it didn’t look good on him. “Do you represent her family?”

“She didn’t have a family,” I said. “We represent the detective who’s looking for her baby.” Which, in a way, was true.

“The baby,” he said, and he aged five years in thirty seconds.

“Yes,” I said, very sternly. “Tell us about it.”

“You know how influential the Joyces are,” he said. “They could have ended my career; they could have sent me to jail.”

“But they didn’t,” Manfred said, his voice just as severe as mine. “Tell us.”

We had no idea what was going on, but it was good to look like we did.

“That night, the night she died, of course I was still practicing in Clear Creek,” Dr. Bowden said. He swiveled in his chair to look out of his window. “It was raining that night, pouring, like it is today. I think it was in February. I’d never treated any of the Joyces; they had their own doctors in Texarkana and Dallas and didn’t mind driving to go to one of their doctors, miles away.” Bitterness crossed his face and left its tracks. “I knew who Rich Joyce was, everyone in town knew him. He was one of those rich men who acts like they’re just like everyone else, you know? Old pickup truck, Levis? Like he didn’t have enough money to drive any vehicle he wanted!” The doctor shook his head at the foibles of someone who could have anything preferring instead to stick with something plain and familiar.

“Was it Rich Joyce who came to your house?”

“Oh, hell, no,” Tom Bowden said. “It was one of the hands, I think. I don’t remember what his name was.” He was lying. “He said Mr. Joyce’s housekeeper was sick, needed me, and they’d pay me extra if I’d come out to the house. Of course I went. I didn’t want to, but it was my duty, and there was the prospect that I’d get in good with Richard Joyce. I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t hoping for that.”

He could have tried to pretend that all day long, and it wouldn’t have convinced me. I felt Manfred shift beside me, wondered if he was trying to suppress a laugh.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I went out there in his truck, and we got out in the rain. We went through this big empty house, and we got to a bedroom, and in it was this young woman. She was in bad shape. She had just given birth. Evidently, her labor had started unexpectedly, and from what the man said to me, she hadn’t even known she was pregnant.”

I tried to absorb that, couldn’t. “But you went out there knowing that you were going to treat a pregnant woman, right?”

He shook his head. I didn’t know if he was trying to say that he hadn’t known, or that he didn’t want to talk about it. I suspected he didn’t want to add to his feeling of guilt by admitting that he’d known he was going out to the Joyce house to treat a patient under conditions he had to know were illegal or pretty damn near.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She didn’t say much of anything. She was having a very hard time. She was very sick, very sick. Her temperature was high; she was sweating, shaking, and very unsteady. Almost incoherent. I couldn’t understand why the man hadn’t taken her to a hospital, and he told me that she didn’t want him to, that she wasn’t supposed to be having the baby, it was a real unpleasant family situation. He told me that the baby was the product of incest.” Dr. Bowden’s mouth folded up in a way that left no doubt as to how uncomfortable the word made him. “He said she was some kind of favorite of old Mr. Joyce, and she wanted to have the baby without him knowing, and then she would go back to her job and give the baby up for adoption. Her memories were too bad for her to want to keep it.”

And you believed this? I wanted to say, but knew I couldn’t break the flow of this confession. This was coming more easily than I ever would have believed, and I could only imagine that Tom Bowden had wanted to tell this story for years. I had a fleeting wonder about the kind of background this man must have, to have fallen for any of this. Of course, you had to add in the big dollop of greed that had influenced him.

“She didn’t have any family,” Manfred said, and after a second Dr. Bowden understood what Manfred was saying. He looked down at his desk fixedly. I could have hit Manfred for his interruption; at the same time, he’d only said what I was thinking.

“I didn’t know for sure,” Bowden muttered. “The man who’d brought me out to the ranch-I thought he was Drexell Joyce-the son. I figured the baby was probably his. Maybe he was ashamed to tell his grandfather that he’d been cheating on his wife; he was wearing a wedding ring, and Ms. Parish wasn’t.”

“Did she talk to you?” I said.

“What?”

“Mariah. Did she talk to you?” It seemed a simple enough question to me, but Tom Bowden was shifting uneasily in his black leather chair.

“No,” he said, and I sighed. Manfred raised a finger, just at the edge of my vision. He thought the doctor was lying again.

“So what happened?” I said, not seeing how we could get him to be honest unless we started beating on him.

“I cleaned the woman up, with some difficulty,” Dr. Bowden said. “I wanted to call for an ambulance and I told the man so again, but he told me that was out of the question. I went to get my coat to use my cell phone, but he’d taken it out of my coat pocket, and he wouldn’t let me have it. I had to treat the patient, and I didn’t have time to fight with him about the phone. She was clearly in the end stages. Even if I could’ve gotten her to a hospital within the hour-and the nearest hospital was that far away, incidentally-she wouldn’t have made it. She had a massive infection.”

“You’re saying she died that night.”

“Yes. About an hour and a half after I got there, she died. She got to hold the baby.”

We all sat silent for a moment. “So, what happened then?” Manfred said.

“The man asked me to examine the baby, and I found that she was okay, a little feverish, but nothing serious. Other than that, physically, she was fine.”

“The baby was a girl.”

“Yes, yes, she was. Small, but as far as I could tell she would be okay, if she got the proper course of treatment. He asked if I had the right stuff to give her. He was going to take the baby directly to the adoptive parents. I actually had some antibiotics with me in my bag, samples a salesman had given me. I explained the dosage and administration to him, and he carried the baby out of the room. That was the last I saw of the infant. The mother expired then.”

Expired. “And what did you do after that?”

He sighed, as if the complexity of relaying his story was too much for him to bear. “I told the man that we had to call into town. We had to report the death. We had quite an argument. He didn’t seem to understand that it was the law, that the law had to be followed.”

Since you’d already bent it so far out of shape, I thought. “But he let you call, finally?”

“He agreed, as long as I didn’t mention the baby. So the funeral home came to get the poor young woman, and I signed the death certificate.” His shoulders slumped. He’d finally told the worst thing, in his view, and now he could relax.

“You said she’d died of…?”

“Massive infection due to a ruptured appendix.”

“And no one questioned that?”

He shrugged. “No family came forward. The Joyces sent me a check to pay my bill-no more-and after that, if anyone who worked for them got sick, they came to me for treatment.”

It had been very clever of them not to offer Dr. Bowden an outright bribe. I was sure the bill he’d sent had been stiff, and they’d paid it just as they would have under normal circumstances. That had reassured the doctor. And since his practice wasn’t flourishing, they’d thrown him a big bone.

“With a setup like that, why’d you move to Dallas?” Manfred asked. Again, I wouldn’t have gotten into that, but again, I’d underestimated the doctor’s elasticity.

“It was my wife. She couldn’t stand Clear Creek,” he said. “And I’ve got to say, no one there got along with her, either. We were having some real wars at home. About six years ago, I got to talking to a doctor I’d never met before at an AMA meeting. He had a practice in Dallas. He told me his office was coming empty, did I want to take over the lease. It was at the previous price, much lower than new tenants were paying. And he’d throw in the equipment, too, because he was going overseas to a new job at an American consulate in Turkey or somewhere like that.”

Could he really not see how set up that had been? It was like someone attaching a string to a dollar bill and then setting it out on the sidewalk, so he could drag it away and get a passerby to follow the path of the money.

“Jeez Louise,” said Manfred. He almost continued, but fortunately he decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Thanks,” I said, after I’d tried to think of more questions to ask. “Oh, did someone else come here this morning, asking about Mariah Parish?”

“Ah… yes, as a matter of fact.”

Why the hell hadn’t I thought to bring pictures of the Joyces with me? I’d done well so far, for someone who didn’t know squat about being a detective, but this was a huge mistake I’d made.

“Who was he?”

“Said his name was Ted Bowman.”

Oh, not that that was anything like Tom Bowden, oh, no.

“And he wanted…”

Tom Bowden looked troubled, or rather, more troubled. “He wanted to know the same things you two wanted to know, but not for the same reason.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It was like he already knew the whole story. He just wanted to know how much I knew about who was involved.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I had no idea who the man who brought me to the house was, that as far as I could tell, the last time I saw the baby she was fine, and that I’d never talked to anyone else about that night.”

“And he said?”

“He said that was good news; he’d heard the baby had died and he was glad to know that she had survived. He said I better forget about that night, and I told him I hadn’t thought about it in years. He warned me that someone else might come asking questions, and he told me whoever came would be someone who was just trying to create trouble by saying Mariah Parish was still alive.”

“What did he tell you to do about that?”

“He told me it would be in my best interest to keep my mouth shut.”

“But you talked to us anyway.”

For the first time, Tom Bowden met my eyes. “I’m tired of keeping the secret,” he said, and I believed him. “I got divorced from my wife anyway. My practice isn’t doing too well, and my whole life hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. I date this downward slide from that night.”

He’d told the truth that time, I was sure. “And what did this man look like?” I asked.

“He was taller than your friend here”-Dr. Bowden nodded condescendingly toward Manfred-“and a good bit stockier, big muscles and chest. Dark hair, in his forties or fifties. Graying a little.”

“Visible tattoos?”

“No, he was wearing a rain jacket,” Dr. Bowden said, in the tone of one pointing out the obvious. His attitude was creeping back. Evidently, crying time was over. I tried to think of more questions to ask him before the well dried up. “You really don’t know the name of the man who took you out to the ranch house?” I found that hard to believe, in a little town like Clear Creek. I said so.

He shrugged. “I hadn’t been in town that long, and the ranch people keep to themselves. This man said he worked for Mr. Joyce, and he was driving a ranch truck. He may have given me a name, but I don’t remember it. It was a stressful evening. Like I said, I suspected he might be Drexell Joyce. But I’d never met Drexell, so I don’t know.”

I’ll bet it had been a stressful evening. Especially for Mariah Parish, whose life might have been saved if the ambulance had come for her… if anyone had been humane enough to call one.

I was a little surprised that she hadn’t been outright murdered, and the baby along with her. At that time Rich Joyce had still been alive, and maybe the fear of what he’d say and do if his caregiver disappeared in his absence had been the deciding factor. He’d miss Mariah, even if no one else would. And Rich Joyce wouldn’t let go if he decided something strange was up.

Maybe the child had been stowed in someone’s home as a bargaining chip of some kind. Maybe one of the ranch hands was raising her. I could make up all kinds of stories in my head, but none of them was more likely than another.

“Where was Rich Joyce that evening?” Manfred asked.

“The man just said he was gone,” Bowden said. “His truck wasn’t there.”

“He didn’t know his caregiver was pregnant? He didn’t notice?”

Bowden shrugged. “That never came up. I don’t know what she told Mr. Joyce. Some women just don’t show that much, and if she was trying to hide it…”

Manfred and I looked at each other. We didn’t have any other questions.

“Goodbye, Dr. Bowden,” I said, standing. He couldn’t hide his relief that we were leaving.

“Are you going to the police?” he asked. “You know, even if they exhume poor Ms. Parish, they won’t be able to tell a thing.” He was regretting having talked to us. But he was also relieved. This guy had had a hard time for the past eight years, living inside his own skin. I, for one, was glad of that.

“I don’t know,” Manfred said, very thoughtfully. He’d had the same reaction. “We’re considering it. If the child came to no harm, it’s possible you may keep your license.”

A horrified Dr. Bowden was staring at us as we went down the hall and out through the waiting room. There were three more patients there, and I felt sorry for them. I wondered what kind of care the doctor would give now that he was definitely on the upset side. He’d had two visits in one day about an event he must have hoped was buried forever; that would be enough to rattle any man, even one made of better stuff than Tom Bowden.

“That guy is a human sewer,” Manfred said when we were in the elevator. He was very angry, his face red with strong emotion.

“I don’t know if he’s quite that bad,” I said, feeling at least ten years older than my companion. “But he’s weak. And he’s a joke, based on the standards a doctor ought to uphold.”

“I wouldn’t be so surprised if it was the 1930s,” Manfred said, surprising me. “That sounds like a story you’d read in a collection of old ghost stories. The knock on the door in the middle of the night, the stranger who comes to take you to a mysterious patient in a big house, the dying woman, the baby, the secrecy…”

I was goggling at Manfred when the doors opened on the ground floor. That had been exactly what I’d been thinking. “Do you believe what he told us was the truth? If we both think he was telling us a story that sounds incredible, maybe it is. Maybe it was a pack of lies.”

“I don’t think he’s a good enough liar,” Manfred said. “Though some of what he told us was lies, of course. How has he made it this far? Didn’t he know that someday, someone would come asking questions? He has to be at least a little smart because he’s a doctor, right? Not everybody can make it through med school. And his license was there on the wall, I read it. I’m going to check up on it. Maybe we need another private eye.”

“No, not considering what happened to the last one,” I snapped, and then felt contrite. “I’m sorry, Manfred. I’m glad you went with me. It’s good there was another set of ears listening and another pair of eyes seeing. Did you believe the main outline of his story? You’re the psychic.”

“I did believe him,” Manfred said after a perceptible pause. “I went back over it in my head, and I think he was telling us the truth. Not all the truth; he did know who the man who came to get him was, for example. And I don’t think the man hid his phone; I think he told the doctor he absolutely couldn’t make a phone call, and I think he told him that in a threatening way. A really good threat would be enough to flatten a guy like Dr. Bowden. I also think the guy had warned the doctor what to expect at the house. Doctors don’t go out now with big bags, like my grandmother said they did when she was little. I think Dr. Bowden knew to take medication for a woman who’d just had a difficult birth, and something for the baby, too.”

That made a lot of sense. “You’re right. So who do you think came into town to get the doctor? Who made that mysterious drive out to the empty big house? Who took the baby? Whoever took Dr. Bowden to the ranch, he was wearing a wedding ring.”

“Oh, that’s right. Good for you for remembering. Well, we know that Drexell was married for a while, and we know that Chip was, too. Could have been either one, or even someone we haven’t met yet.”

We drove back to the hotel, stopping along the way to eat a fast-food lunch. I got a grilled chicken sandwich and didn’t eat the fries. I was trying to eat better; I’d feel better if I did. We didn’t talk much over the food. I don’t know what Manfred was thinking, but I was trying to trace the niggling feeling I’d had when I’d first seen the Joyce party get out of their trucks at the Pioneer Rest Cemetery. I’d thought I’d seen them before, at least the men. Where would I have seen them? Could they have come by the trailer when we were all living there? There had been so many people in and out… and I’d tried so hard to dodge them.

I had to put that idea on the back burner when we returned to the hotel to find Tolliver in a real (and rare) snit. He’d tried to take a shower, and during the course of covering his shoulder with a plastic bag, he’d banged it against the wall, and it had hurt, and he was angry because I was gone so long with Manfred. He’d ordered lunch from room service, and then he’d had a hard time managing taking the cover off the drink and unrolling his silverware, with one good hand. Tolliver clearly had a grievance, and though I was prepared to coddle him until he was in a better frame of mind, I got into my own snit when he told me that Matthew had called to check on him, and when he heard Tolliver’s tale, Matthew had said he was coming to visit since I’d left Tolliver all by himself.

I was mad at Tolliver, and he was mad at me-though I knew this was all because I’d gone on an errand with someone besides him. Normally, Tolliver is not temperamental, and not irritable, and not unreasonable. Today, he was all those things.

“Oh, Tolliver,” I said, my own voice none too loving. “Couldn’t you just suck it up until I got back?”

He glared at me, but I could tell he was already sorry he’d said anything to his dad. It was too late, though. Apparently, McDonald’s was being amazingly forgiving in its work schedule, because in just a few moments Matthew was knocking on the door.

When Matthew came into the living room and walked over to his son while I was still holding the door open, my eyes followed him, and I froze with my hand still on the door. Matthew was the man I’d seen leaving Dr. Bowden’s office that morning. He’d been going out the doors across the lobby as we’d been entering. Same clothes, same walk, same set of the shoulders.

Manfred’s eyes followed mine, and his widened. He asked me a silent question. After a moment, I shook my head. There was no point in having a confrontation-at least, my scrambled head couldn’t instantly see any advantage.

If Matthew admitted he’d been there, he’d simply tell us that he was visiting another doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, in the same building, for whatever reason. It would be hard to disprove. But his presence in Tom Bowden’s building was more coincidence than I could bite off and chew.

It had never occurred to me that Matthew’s reappearance in his children’s lives had anything to do with the Joyces.

Instead of joining the three men, I went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. I felt as if someone had just slammed a car door on my legs, when I was only half in. I tried hard to focus on one idea out of the dozens that were suddenly percolating in my head. My whole world had shifted, and regaining my balance in that world was almost impossible.

Mariah Parish was dead. She had died in childbirth.

Rich Joyce was dead. He’d been shocked to death, if you could call it that.

Victoria Flores, whom Lizzie Joyce had hired to investigate Mariah’s death, was dead, too.

Parker Powers, who’d been investigating the case, was dead.

My stepfather had been to the doctor’s office, the doctor who was present when Mariah Parish had died.

And what else had happened only a couple of months after the mysterious birth of the mysterious baby eight years ago?

My sister Cameron had vanished.